Helping Haiti: 'Everybody Hurts'

It's easy to be cynical about the rich and famous doing their bit for the biggest cause of the day, but it's not a particularly useful sentiment. Yeah, Bill Gates can definitely afford to give $28 billion to charity, but he doesn't have to, and he should be respected for doing so. Campaigns, concerts and the rest raise money and boost awareness of terrible things when it's all too easy to look away and shrug. Sure, loads of people donate to UNICEF, Médecins Sans Frontiers or Partners In Health without a push, but there's certainly no harm in efforts to encourage giving. So... to the Simon Cowell/Sun-organized 'Helping Haiti' release, a cover of REM's fantastic 1992 single 'Everybody Hurts'.

It has to be said that the choice of song is a strange one. While it's obviously not aimed at Haitian record-buyers, even the possible implication of the bereaved, injured and homeless being told to "hang on" and "sing along" when "everything is wrong" because, hey, "everybody cries and everybody hurts - sometimes" is a little unsettling. What's more, the recording itself is absolutely horrible to listen to. Where the original managed the near-impossible feat of tiptoeing a thin line of ridiculous melodrama while always remaining on the right side, this lot regularly leap across it with abandon. Each star sounds as though they're in a fight to out-Bono each another with the most warbly interjection, with Leona and Mariah among the worst culprits. It'll probably be the weakest No.1 of 2010. But you know what? Sometimes that really doesn't matter.